Human Dignity, Justice, Fairness, Youth - Eubios Ethics Institute

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28 Macer, DRJ and Saad-Zoy, S. eds., Asia-Arab Interregional Philosophical Dialogues: Human Dignity, Justice, Fairness, Youth, Democracy and Public Policy (UNESCO, 2011) and Rabbi Ted Falcon, through humour and wisdom, burst the bubbles of traditional interfaith dialogue and dare to break the taboos. They discuss and debate openly about the most contentious subjects in their respective religions in a genuine desire to understand each other. At the heart of their friendship and truth-seeking is the faith that all of these roads lead to the same destination, the same absolute. I mention them now, as this is the attitude I hope to have passed on to my students. The next time I teach this class, I will definitely use the Interfaith Amigos. To end this brief reflection, allow me to return to Seyyed Hossein Nasr: The reality of prophecy is like that of the Sun; it can be eclipsed, but it always returns as an abiding reality. As for philosophy understood in its time-honoured sense, it is the quest for the truth, for wisdom, for a vision of the whole, for insight into the nature and causes of things. As long as there are human beings, there will be men and women drawn to this quest, and there will be philosophy in the sense defined here. Therefore, philosophy in the land of prophecy is a reality that is of central concern now as it was yesterday, and it will remain of central concern tomorrow as it is today. The deepest philosophies whose truths are perennial and that speak to us today, as they did to our forefathers before us, are those that, while using the inner intellectual and rational faculties with which human beings are endowed, are fruits of philosophizing in a world whose landscape has been illuminated by the light of prophecy and permeated by the perfume of the Sacred. 18 Commentator: Naima Hadj Abderrahmane 18 Nasr, Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present. pp. 279-280.
Macer, DRJ and Saad-Zoy, S. eds., Asia-Arab Interregional Philosophical Dialogues: Human Dignity, Justice, Fairness, Youth, Democracy and Public Policy (UNESCO, 2011) 29 Towards a Transcultural Ethics: A Note on Integration Policy In-Suk Cha Seoul National University I. John Dewey, pragmatist and reform liberal, famously wrote that “Democracy has to be born anew in every generation, and education is its midwife” (The Middle Works, vol.10: 1916-17, p.19). This perennially insightful remark reminds us that the multidimensional contours, contexts and citizens of a democracy are in a constant flow, a state of deep and wide, ever moving liquidity. For, Dewey, who saw democracy as joined to participation, his statement meant that democracy’s citizens, not just their representatives, needed to be educated and practiced in the public reasoning necessary for political deliberation. Dewey was not the first prominent philosopher to speak of deliberation as necessary for democracy, indeed philosophers have been talking about the nature of deliberation at least since early Athens with its limited, exclusionary essay in democracy. In the West, deliberation in governance was much discussed in the Age of Enlightenment, when democratic principles like freedom and equality were beginning to be articulated. In the 19 th century, John Stuart Mill advocated government by discussion, though he favored the better educated as the ones who should discuss. John Dewey, born in the mid 19 th century in 1859, began publishing in 1887 and continued as a force until his death in 1952. He saw deliberation as more than the right or privilege of a particular class of educated people; he would have all people educated. To counteract the poverty engendered by the Gilded Age of big business and consumerism, Dewey advocated building a culture of deliberation, to include all members of a democracy’s constantly shifting, changing and expanding society. This fit in well with Dewey’s insistence that the liberalism of his day needed to be reformed. Curiously, the liberalism of Dewey’s day was much the same philosophically as is the so-called neo-liberalism of today, that is, the so called classical liberalism of Dewey’s day saw individuals as independent competitors in the market place, and government’s job was to allow each individual to carry on the competition. Dewey insisted that all citizens, all people were exist only in relations to one another and the state represents each of them only in so far as they are related together in the purpose and interest of fairness. Hence, the need for the state to encourage and provide ways for participatory discourse and deliberation. (See Dewey’s “The Ethics of Democracy”). Deliberation is, of course, talk, dialogue, discussion about issues that affect the populace. But it is a special kind of talk. Deliberation requires that those in the discussion present points of view and arguments cogently and reasonably even when all involved are in agreement. Of course, Dewey did not expect that all would be in agreement, even after deliberation. An important requisite in carrying out deliberations is that we presuppose that we all possess the ability of moral reasoning on the basis of an intersubjectively arrived at understanding of such democratic ideals as freedom, equality and human rights. Dewey’s dream of a Great Society was based on this mutual ability to understand. Dewey’s work and influence did not achieve a great or lasting deliberative democracy in his country, yet his influence lingers there and globally. His strongest ideas regarding the relationship of individuals to the state and the state as representing its citizens only in so far as individuals are related to one another in purpose and interest are often noted in the surge of studies advocating a return to or increase in deliberative democracy which has appeared in the
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